With last Wednesday's decision to scrap plans for a promised missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama put the finishing touches on a new and dangerous entity: post-allied America. With his declaration a week later before the UN General Assembly that "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War" no longer apply, he justified his creation. As a string of headlines from Central and Eastern European capitals makes plain, the U.S.'s most reliable democratic partners see the administration's decision for what it was: a historic shift in America's priorities. Adversaries' wishes now enjoy equal baseline footing with the needs of friends. Whatever may tip Washington in this or that policy direction, a history of cooperation or shared ideology will not be a factor. The Obama administration believes, ahistorically, that this will turn bad actors good.
The implications are disastrous. Small democracies, like Poland and the Czech Republic, may fall prey to aggressive, expansionist neighbors like Russia. Rogue and autocratic regimes will go unchecked as they ratchet up various proscribed initiatives. The U.S. will lose access to valuable partnerships, thus halting our ability to roll back dangers and maintain global stability. Already fading is American credibility. How can the U.S. hope to shame China out of abetting totalitarian North Korea when President Obama himself has just agreed to snub the pro-Democracy Dalai Lama out of deference to China? One-time allies will be forced into expedient relationships with our ideological antagonists. Democracy may see worldwide retreat.
The missile defense decision was a knock-out blow to our fraying alliances. But the Obama administration's unmistakable capitulation to the Kremlin was preceded by months of escalating post-ally policy. It should be no surprise that some of the potential dangers listed above have been realized. Treating Israel as just another Middle Eastern country with stubborn complications has led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into secret security discussions with Moscow. Indifference to maintaining our relationship with Great Britain may be seen as the backdrop before which Scotland freed the murderer of 190 Americans in order to facilitate Libyan oil contracts.
The shift in American policy is more than geostrategic. It is a shift in the realm of ideas. President Obama has not merely sided with anti-democratic states over democratic ones, but supported anti-democratic forces over democratic ones within the same states. Instead of throwing U.S. patronage behind aggrieved Iranian voters, the American president "bore witness" to their deadly struggle before the White House publicly recognized their tormentor as "the elected leader" of Iran. Instead of standing with democratic Hondurans, who refused to see their country go the way of regional banana republics, Obama has decided to refuse them aid and recognition until they accept a would-be self-appointed strongman.
Reversing the damage of all this may prove the work of decades. "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend," said William Blake. America is burning through its supply of post-World War II goodwill at an unsustainable rate. When U.S. foreign policy is eventually righted, there will be a slew of costly amends to make.
But getting through this depressing moment is still a long way off. For as we abandon the notion of critical allies, the world's bad actors embrace it anew. If in January 2002 there was an Axis of Evil, today there is a continuous loop. One can draw a line of nefarious cooperation through the following countries and connect the last with the first to start all over again: Russia-Venezuela-Iran-Syria-North Korea-Burma. On matters of defense, economics, intelligence, and energy, these anti-democratic, nuclear and nuclear-aspirant countries are working together in various configurations to extend their reach into all hemispheres. Simultaneously history's most effective force for good is shrinking its influence and severing ties with sympathetic global partners. The hope is that antagonistic regimes will so appreciate this humility they will reconfigure their political and cultural DNA and become friends of the United States.
While this is a foreign policy worthy of grade school it is certainly not harmless.
In December of 2007, Senator Barack Obama was winding down a caucus pitch in Iowa when he hit one of the loftiest rhetorical notes of his candidacy for President of the United States: "I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, 'You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.'"
